BRITAIN: Michael Gove is calling for a "determined national commitment" to tackle illiteracy and innumeracy leading to "wasted" lives.

He defended his reforms to the education system as a moral purpose to ensure children attend school and behave properly.

He said: "It's those children who arrive at secondary school incapable of reading properly, who find they can't follow the curriculum, who cover up their ignorance with a mask of bravado, disrupting lessons, disobeying teachers, dropping out of school, drifting into gang culture and in the worst cases, ending up in the justice system."

ISRAEL: G4S the world's largest security firm has agreed to end its contracts with Israeli prisons over the next three years.

The annual general meeting from the company was severely interrupted by human rights protestors concerned about wellbeing in Palestinian territories.

G4S intends to let their contacts expire without renewing them, rather than actively cancelling operations.